


Liability

by linguamortua



Category: Billions (TV)
Genre: Dirty Talk, F/M, Femdom, Foot Fetish, Resolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:09:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25172908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linguamortua/pseuds/linguamortua
Summary: Wendy always made him wait for the good shit, work for it. Everyone around him was like a vending machine. Bobby put his game face on and the treats just fucking tumbled out. Boring. Wendy had the real deal, the peanut butter cups, and he had to earn them.
Relationships: Wendy Rhoades/Bobby Axelrod
Comments: 4
Kudos: 22





	Liability

**Author's Note:**

  * For [trill_gutterbug](https://archiveofourown.org/users/trill_gutterbug/gifts).



> For Trill, of course. It only took me a year, pal!
> 
> I don't always write F/M but when I do it's femdom, I guess?

In the end, Bobby waited until almost seven o'clock, when the traders were starting to clear out and Deb was discreetly yawning at her desk. He had been daring himself to leave it too late, that much he knew. When he got to Wendy's office, she was folding her iPad into its case. He paused for a moment at the door, taking in, as he always did, her polish and poise. There was a lock of hair coming out of its style and clinging to the side of her throat.

'Hi,' he said casually, coming in without knocking and carelessly pushing the door closed behind him.

'I was just leaving,' Wendy said, smiling at him.

'Well, you can't. You have a patient.' Bobby flung himself down on her couch and stuffed a cushion under his head. 'Analyse me,' he demanded, grinning at her.

She cocked her head. 'You're buoyant today. Can it wait until tomorrow?'

Bobby pulled the trigger, counting on bravado to see him through. 'I fucked a reporter, and I need you to tell me how that should make me feel, Doctor.'

If he hadn't been looking at her fingers and expecting it, Bobby wouldn't have caught the tiny pause before she remembered to act naturally. Wendy slowly unbuttoned the iPad case again and came to sit opposite him in her chair. Her hair was up very high today, and as she sat down Bobby watched her earrings swing against the length of her neck.

Very deliberately: 'Did you plan for it to happen?'

Damn, she was good. Bobby mentally added another stick to her end of year bonus for not reacting to _him_. 'No, but I knew I could have him if I wanted. Known for a while.'

'So it was an impulsive decision.'

'A smart woman once told me I'm prone to them.'

'Let's unpack why you wanted to do it.'

'Apart from the obvious?'

'Right,' Wendy said, drawing the word out knowingly. 'Because you're so deprived at home.'

Bobby wondered if Lara talked to Wendy about their sex life. It was the kind of thing she'd use as a weapon: taunting poor, vibrant Wendy about her boring, lumpen husband. He was pretty sure Chuck couldn't get it up. All the hours Wendy put in at work had to be some kind of displacement activity.

'Did it make you feel powerful?'

Bobby could feel the pulse in the hollow of his throat. He couldn't believe how self-possessed she sounded, saying it. They'd never talked about his sex life in a session before, and he had been okay with that. Maybe a little disappointed. But always between them had been the kind of swirling, absorbing chemistry that could easily get out of hand. He knew she knew it; neither of them could avoid it.

Everything depended on controlling that. Yet here Bobby was, unable to control even his own heart rate.

The seconds stretched on, already too long. He had to respond.

'A little,' he lied. Wendy raised her eyebrows very slightly. ‘A lot,’ he admitted.

‘You don’t like to do things unless they make you feel powerful.’

Bobby spread his hands wide: _tell me something I don't know_. She always made him wait for the good shit, work for it. Everyone around him was like a vending machine. Bobby put his game face on and the treats just fucking tumbled out. Boring. Wendy had the real deal, the peanut butter cups, and he had to earn them. That had always been the implicit arrangement, and he respected that.

She waited.

‘So I felt powerful, and I like to fuck,’ he said. ‘What’s so weird about that?’

‘Nothing. But you’re here.’

‘I think I should care more than I do.’

‘About?’

Bobby thought about it for a minute. She shook stuff loose for him and then he had to connect the dots.

‘The risk.’

‘Of being caught.’

‘Yeah. Middle of the morning, downtown hotel. Not discreet.’

‘Caught by who?’

Bobby rolled his eyes. ‘Who do you think?’

‘I don’t think, I know. I want to hear you say it.’

‘Why, if you already know?’

‘Because it’s important that you take the time to verbalise these things. We’ve talked about this before. Your mind works fast and so you can rationalise actions and decisions away before you have the time to process that that’s what you’re doing. When you say it out loud to me, in here, we make time for you to acknowledge and honour the emotions.’

‘Okay, okay. Caught on camera.’

‘You care what the public thinks?’

It was rhetorical.

‘Nah. Lara.’

‘You wouldn’t want to be photographed because it might get back to her.’

Bobby nodded. Wendy made a note on her iPad, taking her time. Really letting him sit with it. He knew what she was doing but it didn’t make the strategy any less effective.

‘You’ve never been unfaithful to her before, have you?’

‘Maybe we have an arrangement,’ Bobby told her, lifting his eyebrows. From his position on the couch he was looking up at her a little. Body language had told him years ago that she wasn’t unmoved by the sight of him looking up at her. Everyone liked to feel powerful, he guessed.

‘Somehow I don’t think Lara’s the type.’

‘She’s not.’ He was not unconcerned that she might find out, and her reaction wouldn’t be pretty. Bobby liked Lara’s fire and the mouth she had on her when she was mad, but conveniently she was only ever mad at other people. For the first time, the notion that he might really have fucked up was settling in. That was Wendy for you. Bobby would come in with a notion, and she’d turn it into a revelation.

The reporter, Dimonda, hardly more than a kid to Bobby, had been so different. What was his first name? Matt? Mack? Mike. That was it.

_Call me Mike. Do you usually give interviews in hotel rooms?_

_I’m not usually being interviewed by you._

'There was something you were looking for when you pursued this encounter. Something worth risking your marriage for.'

'You think I'd give up Lara for some dick?' Bobby asked. He realised as soon as he said it that it had been an undisciplined, defensive response.

'No, I don't,' Wendy said calmly.

'I'm not ashamed about it, if that's what you were thinking. We're adults, right? We're past being ashamed about sex.'

'If you were ashamed, you wouldn't have been so casual with me. And if you're not experiencing shame or guilt, then something else brought you through my door.'

Bobby suddenly didn't want to be lying down, looking up at her as she skewered him. He rolled gracefully to his feet and stuck his hands in his pockets, affecting equilibrium as he walked over to the bookshelf and tipped his head sideways to read the spines.

'Got any Freud? Maybe he can shed some light.'

‘Freud wouldn’t have known what to do with you.’ Wendy’s serenity implied, Bobby thought, _but I do_. She was very close; he could smell her perfume. Incredibly faint, because it was the end of the day and because Wendy would never impose herself on someone else by wearing more than could be smelled outside of her personal space.

Bobby realised too late that she had successfully boxed him in, caught him in the little square of space between desk and bookshelf. Her heels were sky-high today so she was almost tall enough to look him in the eye. Even if she hadn't been, Wendy always did have that way of commanding a room. It wasn’t just her beauty, although that helped. It was some other indefinable charismatic element. Right now, she could have been wearing flats and he’d still be feeling like she was looking down on him.

‘You’re agitated.’

‘I’m under siege here, Doctor Rhoades.’

‘That’s not it. You thrive on conflict.’

‘Are we arguing?’

‘Aren’t we?’ Wendy’s mouth was very red, and it made her tiny, slow smile hypnotic. She was playing with him. Bobby’s real laugh bubbled up out of him before he could stop it. The dumb laugh—the one that burst out when his boys were messing around and cracking him up—the gurgling, uncontrolled laugh that he’d worked so hard to replace with a knowing, urbane chuckle.

‘We don’t argue. It’s not what we do.’

_’I’d like us to be friends,’ Bobby lied, smiling. Some of the hard tension around Dimonda’s mouth released. It was a very stupid tell to still possess, and Bobby resisted the urge to sneer. Wags would have the kid in tears on his first day if he worked at Axe Cap. Any lead would be worthless from him, so easily read as he was, so easily manipulated. So _he_. was worthless. The sudden wave of contempt that rolled through Bobby was almost enough to kill the mood._

_Except, if he left, he wouldn’t get what he came for. For the low low price of this mediocre hotel room, an hour of his time and getting his dick wet, Bobby could crack this kid open and reveal all kinds of shit about Chuck. It was clear the kind of guy the reporter was. Bobby could fling a fortune at him and it’d only compel him to clam up tighter: honour, nobility, martyrdom, the reporter’s craft. All that shit. But make him feel special, feel sentimental… oh yeah, that’d do it._

‘We don’t argue,’ Bobby said to Wendy again, aware that he was losing the thread of conversation but for once intoxicatingly unsure how to regain it.

‘So why are you flushed?’ Wendy touched two fingers to the hollow of Bobby’s throat.

 _Don’t swallow,_ he thought to himself, swallowing.

‘Should you be interrogating a patient?’

‘You’ve made it very clear that you’re not my patient,’ said Wendy, amused.

'In that case, I've changed my mind—interrogate me.’ Bobby flashed her his best and most winning smile—the wide-eyed one that worked on everyone.

‘You’re pretending to cede control. Asking me to take it.’

‘Pretending?’

Wendy raised her eyebrows. ‘You sign off on my paychecks.’

‘Oh, yeah,’ Bobby said, still distracted ( _control_ , he thought aimlessly), ‘I’m the boss.’

‘You don’t sound convinced.’ Wendy’s voice was perfectly neutral. _And how does that make you feel?_ Her studied calm suddenly irritated her. He _was_ the boss, god damn it, and he was here to get his head back in the game.

‘I’ll prove it,’ said Bobby. He came up closer yet to her. At this distance, he could see the loose eyebrow hair threatening to fall and stick to her cheek; the full, beestung line around the perimeter of her lips. The tiny filaments of brown and gold in the irises of her eyes.

‘How?’ Wendy sounded genuinely interested.

‘I’ll do,’ Bobby began, resting a hand on the bookshelf near her hip, ‘anything you want.’

They both let that hang in the air for a moment. It had come out wrong, Bobby thought. It was supposed to be a swaggering challenge, but the effect had been plaintive. In response, the half-smile on Wendy’s face dissolved. Under the skin, micro-movements of her facial muscles; her posture subtly changed. Bobby heard the ice cracking underneath him. Wendy blinked slowly, like a cat, touching the fan of her dark lashes almost to her cheekbones.

‘Get on your knees,’ she said, and she said it like fucking Cleopatra.

All at once, two things happened: Bobby's throat tightened, and his knees gave out. He crashed to the carpet in front of her. He'd have bruised knees later. At first he couldn't quite believe he was down there. His hands were resting on his knees, palm-up. Why had he done that? He saw himself as if from outside his own body, making a picture.

He hoped Wendy liked it.

'See?' he said. His voice came out unsteady again.

'Do you know how much time I spend listening to you talking?' Wendy asked. Bobby waited a moment, wondering if the question was rhetorical.

'A lot?' Bobby guessed. He flicked a glance up, to see how the answer landed. She wasn't even looking at him. Her iPad was open in her hand and she was reading something. The little spark inside Bobby that flared up when someone disrespected him made its presence felt. He took a quick, inward breath.

'That's your cue to be quiet, Bobby,' Wendy told him before he could get a word out.

Something strange happened when she said that. The world tipped a little on its axis, maybe, and moved closer to the sun. That would account for the way Bobby’s face got hot, and for the prickle of sweat that broke out under his artfully distressed t-shirt. Bobby was a redhead, which meant that blushing was a defect he’d had to carefully train himself out of in his profession. Now, however, he knew he was starting to look pink. Wendy was still cool as you like, a real fucking ice queen.

She snapped her iPad case shut and set it down on the table. Then she turned to look at him. From this angle, her legs went on forever. She held his gaze until it became uncomfortable. Bobby found himself desperate to say something and break the tension. But _your cue to be quiet_ kept turning itself over in his mind. So he was quiet.

Wendy’s mouth curved into a perfect red smile. Bobby was right on the edge of getting hard. He breathed slowly and evenly through his nose, trying to forestall it. This was a game. He was getting a handle on the shape of the ruleset, and he didn’t want to tip his hand right now. Sure, he was on his knees. He wasn’t about to be giving away any more of an advantage.

Even thinking about it like that made him feel better. More like he was in control. The boss.

Above him, Wendy closed her iPad case and set it aside. She took a Kleenex from the box and wiped it along the edges of her bookshelves, and dropped it into the trash. Then, from her black leather purse, she pulled out lipstick and a compact and touched up her mouth, powdered her nose and forehead.

‘Do I need to be more interesting?’ Bobby asked, piqued. As soon as it spilled out his mouth he regretted it. Exposing, again.

Wendy came back over to him. She stepped in close, so that one foot was in the v of his knees. The other a little behind it, turned out, like a ballet pose.

‘We once talked about the value of quiet reflection,’ she told him. ‘You might try that.’

‘I meditate every day.’ _Like a good boy,_ he would have said, except that she had put him on his knees and he wasn’t sure whether that was a punishment or not.

‘And how does that serve you, Bobby?’

Wendy said it in her therapist’s voice, and so Bobby tried to answer it in kind. ‘It cuts through the noise. It centres me. I make better decisions.’

‘More profitable decisions?’

‘Less emotional ones. The profit comes later.’

‘Was the reporter an emotional decision?’

‘Yes.’

‘Ah.’ Wendy smiled. ‘That’s a truth. A good one.’ Bobby was blushing again, or perhaps he’d never stopped. Counting on her fingers, Wendy summarised. ‘You didn’t plan to do it. It was impulsive. That’s not always a bad thing. Sometimes your impulses are beneficial to Axe Cap. We’ve talked about intuition before and its value. But you weren’t looking for insight. You wanted to feel powerful, but you have lots of ways of doing that. You don’t know how to feel about it. You’re worried that Lara will find out, although you didn’t consider that before you did it. Where does that take you, Bobby?’

Bobby rolled his neck from side to side, thinking. Wendy would never give him the answer. That wasn’t how it worked, and anyway, it would be boring. ‘I wanted,’ he began, embarrassing himself by saying it, ‘something.’

‘What?’

He couldn’t not look at her. She was so close. Bobby could nudge either knee inward and touch her shoe with it. And he could smell her, her perfume, her body.

‘I get bored,’ he said.

‘That’s a lie.’

‘I get,’ he said, what? He tried again. ‘I didn’t want Lara to see.’

‘You wanted someone to see.’ Wendy laughed, very unlike a therapist. ‘You like the attention.’

‘Your attention,’ said Bobby. ‘I like your attention.’

Wendy exhaled, satisfied. And she moved her shoe, her bright, hard shoe, up a few inches. It rested on the crotch of Bobby’s jeans.

‘Isn’t it nice,’ she said, ‘that you can _afford_ my attention?’

Her shoe exerted a notch of pressure. Bobby was hard, and had been so for some time. He wasn’t precisely sure for how long. Maybe since his knees had hit the floor, or when he had started to feel the blood rise in his face and neck. Now he had noticed, it was as though the entirety of his consciousness was concentrated in the dull throb of his cock under Wendy’s red-soled shoe.

‘It’s nice,’ he said, voice hoarse. He couldn’t figure out whether to look at her shoe or her face. He split the difference, running his eyes up her leg to where the bend of her knee had rucked up her dress to expose the thin, lacy line of her stocking. Half an inch of decoration. Wendy, deliberate in everything, would never show him that by accident. And again the world tilted and Bobby realised with delirious joy that she was getting something out of this, too. He wanted her. She wanted him. Wasn’t that a trip? Wasn’t it a game?

Bobby tested his theory by biting at his lip as if thinking. He touched the collar of his t-shirt, smoothing at it. What was the point in wearing them tight, if not for this? In response, Wendy shifted her weight so that she could press the whole flat toe of her shoe against him. With just the barest motion, it was easy for Bobby to rub against it. So he did. Her hand could hardly be better than this, he thought.

Her, watching him; him, watching her.

It was almost like a regular session. Here they were, talking it out. Here she was, totally focused on him. And Bobby, working for all of her attention.

‘Attention seeking,’ Wendy said, ‘can be a destructive behaviour.’

Bobby laughed breathlessly, eyes closing. God, she knew him. ‘Isn’t this destructive for you, too? Does Chuck know about it?’

‘My sessions with you are confidential,’ she said. Bobby shivered. Okay, she’d made it clear a dozen times that she wasn’t working at Axe Cap in a medical capacity. She was a coach. That was the deal, to keep her. On the other hand, Bobby had never _not_ considered her his shrink, kind of.

‘Good,’ he said.

‘Good?’

‘There are things I only tell you.’

‘I know.’ Wendy’s voice was tight. ‘I—I see you.’

Bobby had one hand on the floor now, to give him leverage. He was consumed with a desperate ache, now, even though he’d already gotten off once today.

‘You could destroy me and Axe Cap,’ he said. ‘Does that make you feel powerful, Doctor?’

‘I don’t need to destroy anything to be powerful.’ With some Pilates-born dexterity, she leaned down close to him. It put a little more of her weight on his cock. Bobby stifled a sound even as his whole body tried to lift closer to her. She was almost close enough to kiss. ‘Isn’t this power?’

‘Yes,’ Bobby said, gasping it out.

Wendy kissed him then, a deep, humid press of her tongue into his mouth. She kissed him the way he’d always liked to kiss women. Possessively, assertively. Bobby had to touch her then. His hand came to the arch of her foot and he fucked up against her. Two thrusts and it was done, he was done, he was coming and saying something into her mouth at the same time.

He ended up collapsing back onto his hands, sweaty and dishevelled. His t-shirt was coming up at the front and his right shoe was sliding off over his heel.

‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ he said, wonderingly.

Wendy stood up. Apart from a flush at the base of her long throat, she hardly looked moved by what had happened. Then she smiled at him, and not her reserved smile. Bobby’s heart almost stopped with the way she looked at him.

‘You’re beautiful on your knees. Much more than on your throne.’ She nodded her head in the direction of his office.

‘This is why I come to therapy,’ said Bobby flippantly. At some point, he thought, he was going to have to stand up and deal with the aftermath.

Wendy didn’t answer. She put on her coat and smoothed its black lapels down flat. A touch to the blinds to make sure they were closed, and she looked around the room, force of habit, making sure everything was in its place. She picked up her purse and turned to the door, pausing to look at him.

‘Make good decisions, Bobby,’ she said gently, turning off the light, and then she was leaving with crisp clicks of her heels.

‘That’s what I have you for,’ Bobby said, to the empty room.


End file.
